"My not giving him up? How can I give him up?"
"I see your point. You think you're exchanging a temporary affection for a permanent one. You admit that I shall love you as long as you're nice to look at. Very well. You'll be nice to look at for some considerable time. I shall therefore love you for some considerable time. Robert Lucy will love you just as long as he believes in you. How long will that be?"
She did not answer.
"You don't know. Have you calculated the probable effect of gradual enlightenment on our friend's mind?"
"I've calculated nothing."
"No. You are not a calculating woman. I just ask you to consider this point. I am not, as you know, in the least surprised at any of your charming little aberrations. But our friend Lucy has not had many surprises in his life. He'll come to you with an infinite capacity for astonishment. It's quite uncertain how he'll take—er—anything in the nature of a surprise. And, if you ask me, I should say he'd take it hard. Are you going to risk that?"
He was returning to his point even when he feigned to have lost sight of it. Tortured and panting she evaded it with pitiful subterfuges. He urged her back, pressing her tender breast against the prick of it.
"I'm going to risk everything," she said.
"Risk it, risk it, then. Tie yourself for life to a man you don't know; who doesn't really know you, though you think he does; who on your own showing wouldn't marry you if he did know. You see what a whopping big risk it is, for he's bound to know in the end."
She sickened and wearied. "He is not bound to know. Why is he?"